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CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Objects of the Society 3 

Terms of Membership 3 

Officers prom its Organization 4 

Officers for 1884-85 5 

Origin of the Monument 6 

Presentation op the Monument 7 

The Procession 8 

Prayer of Bishop Potter , 9 

Remarks of Henry R. Beekman 11 

Singing, and Music by the Seventh Regiment Band 13 

Remarks of Daniel F. Appleton 13 

President Woodford's Speech 13 

Remarks of Adolph L. Sanger 15 

Oration, by George William Curtis 16 






OBJECTS OF 'THE SOCIETY. 



The New England Society in the City of New York was organized 
May 6, 1805, to commemorate the landing of our Pilgrim Fathers on 
Plymouth Rock; to promote friendship, charity, and mutual assistance; 
and for literary purposes. 



TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP. 



Initiation Fee, $10 

Annual Dues 5 

Life Membership, . 50 

(Payable at Election.) 

Any descendant of a New-Englander, of good moral character, from 
and after the age of 18, is eligible. 

The widow or child of a member, if in need of it, is entitled to five 
times as much as he may have paid the Society. 

^SW The friends of a deceased member are requested to give the Sec- 
retary early information of the time and place of his birth and death, 
for the obituary list in our annual report. Members who change their 
address should give the Secretary early notice. 

Address 

L. P. HUBBARD, Secretary, 

No. 80 Wall Street. 



OFFICERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

FROM ITS ORGANIZATION. 



James Watson . . 
Oliver Wolcott . 
Amasa Jackson . . 
Ebenezer Stevens . 
Lynde Catlin . . 
Henry R. Storrs . 
Joseph Hoxie . . 
Moses H. Grinnell 
Simeon Draper . . 
Benjamin W. Bonney 
William M. Evarts 

Stewart 



Presidents. 

1805 Henry A. Hurlbut 

1807 William Curtis Noyes 

1815 E. D. Morgan . . 

1817 Joseph H. Choate . 

1824 Elliot C. Cowdin . 

1834 Isaac H. Bailey . . 

1838 William Borden . 

1843 Daniel F. Appleton 

1855 James C. Carter . 

1856 JOSIAH M. FiSKE . . 

1858 Marvelle W. Cooper 



1862 
1864 
1865 
1867 
1871 
1873 
1875 
1877 
1879 
1880 
1882 



L. Woodford 



1883. 



Jonathan Burrall 
Lynde Catlin 
R. H. Ne\t:ns 
Ezra Weeks . 
Robert Btjloid 
Caleb Barstow 



Tre.asurers. 

1805 Augustus G. Hazard 

1820 Joshua L. Pope . . 

1824 Luther B. Wyman . 

1833 JosiAH M. Fiske . . 

1834 J. Pierpont Morgan 
1839 William Dowd . . 



1842 
1845 
1854 
1875 
1877 
1884 



Secretaries. 



Samuel M. Hopkins . . 1805 
Benjamin M. Mumford . 1805 
Peter Hawes .... 1807 
Joseph Warren Brackett 1809 
John Q. Wilson .... 1810 
Tyler Maynard . . . 1815 
Beza E. Bliss . . . . 1815 
Amherst Wight . . . 1817 
Luther Prescott 



Erastus Goodwin . 
Francis Olmstead . 
William P. Hawes . 
Levi G. Curtiss . . 
Edward S. Gould . 
Alfred A. Weeks . 
Joseph I. Brewer . 
Ephraim Kingsbury 
Hubbard . . 1854. 



1822 
1824 
1824 
1829 
1829 
1829 
1847 
1848 



OFFICERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 

1884-85. 



STEWART L. WOODFORD. 

iTirst 17tce=^rEsfaent, 

HORACE RUSSELL. 

.SecouDr 17ice=^resi&ent, 
CORNELIUS N. BLISS. 



litrectors. 

FOK ONE YEAR. FOR THREE YEARS. 

NOAH BROOKS, MYLES STANDISH. 

AUGUSTUS G. PAINE, WILLIAM A. WHEELOCK, 

L. G. WOODHOUSE. GRANVILLE P. HAWES, 

WALTER H. LEWIS. CHARLES C. BEAMAN. 

FOR TWO YEARS. FOR FOUR YEARS. 

LEVI M. BATES, SIGOURNEY W. FAY, 

GEORGE W. SMITH, CHARLES M. STEAD, 

JAMES H. DUNHAM, ALFRED C. CHENEY, 

DANIEL G. ROLLINS. HENRY H. ROGERS. 



^Treasurer, 
WILLIAM DOWD. 

Secretary, 
L. P, HUBBARD. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE MONUMENT. 

At the seventy-third annual meeting of the New England 
Society, December 11, 1878, as Mr. Daniel F. Appleton was 
about to retire from the presidency, he suggested the idea 
of presenting a monument, commemorating the Landing of 
the Pilgrims, to the city of New York, as follows : 

" I avail myself of this occasion to recommend that you 
inaugurate measures toward the erection of a suitable monu- 
ment in this city to the memory of our heroic ancestors, and 
I would suggest that a statue of one of the Pilgrim Fathers 
of Plymouth, or of one of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay 
— some typical historical personage of the earliest period of 
either of those colonies — would be the most acceptable and 
convenient form of the monument. The many reasons why 
we should have such a monument, which would undoubtedly 
find a proper place in the Central Park, will occur to all of 
you, and it would seem that this strong and influential So- 
ciety, composed as it is of more than twelve hundred mem- 
bers, is the proper body to undertake the work, and, without 
aid from others, to complete it. 

" As for the ' ways and means,' I will only suggest that 
a small contribution might be asked from the members, 
limited in amount as to each one, to be continued until a 
sufficient sum would be secured. And I ask that you re- 
fer this proposal either to your Board of Officers, or to a 
special committee, with instructions to begin the work, or to 
take such other action in the matter as may seem to you best." 



THE PRESENTATION OF THE MONUMENT. 

The heroic bronze statue of the Pilgrim, by J. Q. A. 
Ward, sculptor, was unveiled and presented to tiie city of 
New York on Saturday afternoon, June 6, 1S85. 

It is placed in Central Park upon a gentle eminence, at the 
junction of the Grand Drive with the entrance from Seventy- 
second Street, on the east side of the Park. The statue faces 
the west. It is nine feet high, and stands upon a pedestal 
of Quincy granite, three feet high, which was designed by 
Hunt, the architect. 

The figure represents a Puritan of the early part of the 
seventeenth century, dressed in the severe garb of his sect, 
standing erect and looking off into the distance with earnest, 
searching gaze. One arm falls at his side ; the other rests 
on the muzzle of his old flint-lock musket. He wears the tall, 
broad-brimmed Puritan hat, which lends additional austerity 
to his stern but handsome features. The statue was mod- 
elled by J. Q. A. Ward, and cast in bronze by the Henry 
Bonnard Company of this city. 

At two o'clock in the afternoon the members of the New 
England Society, with their invited guests, met at the Co- 
lumbia Rink, on the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifty- 
ninth Street. The New England Society of Brooklyn, who 
had been specially invited, were also present in large numbers. 
Colonel Locke W. Winchester acted as grand marshal of 
the parade, and was assisted by a number of efficient aides. 
The Uniformed Battalion of the Seventh Regiment Vet- 
erans acted as escort. Music was furnished by the Seventh 
Regiment Band under the direction of Cappa. 



8 

The procession formed promptly at half-past two o'clock, 
and marched up Fifty-ninth Street to Fifth Avenue, then 
up Fifth Avenue to Sixty-fifth Street, then down that 
street to Madison Avenue, then north to Sixty-sixth Street, 
and then back through Sixty-sixth Street to Fifth Avenue. 
The procession passed through Sixty-sixth Street that they 
might salute General Grant at his residence. He had been 
told of the intention of the Society to pay him the honor of 
a marching salute, and as the band turned into Sixth-sixth 
Street the sick veteran, attended by Dr. Douglas and the 
Rev. Dr. Newman, stepped into the bow-M'indow of his 
residence and awaited the procession. At the window of 
the lower floor Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Frederick Grant, Mrs. Jesse 
Grant, Mrs. Newman, and several of the little grandchildren 
of the sick hero were gathered. As the head of the pro- 
cession reached the house General Grant waved a recogni- 
tion to the uniformed veterans, who saluted in military style. 
As the Societ}' marched by, its President, General Wood- 
ford, gave the order '' Hats oft",'' ^.nd as the line swept past 
General Grant stood, with his skull-cap in his hand, until 
the last platoon had gone by. He was visibly moved by the 
affectionate greetings which he received from the members 
and guests of the Society. He has so often been our guest 
in other days that our members honored him with the 
affection of personal friends, as well as with the respect of 
loyal citizens. 

Reaching Fifth Avenue, the column moved quickly along 
to Seventy-second Street, where it was met by a platoon of 
park police acting as an escort to Park Commissioners Crim- 
mins, Beekman, Powers, Matthews, and Borden. The proces- 
sion then passed along the driveway to the knoll on which the 
statue is erected. Before the arrival of the Society and its 
escort some three thousand spectators had gathered about 
the flag-draped statue and were waiting for the presentation 
exercises. A large stand had been erected, which was 



9 

elegantly draped with flags and hangings and on which were 
gathered the invited guests and the chorus-singers. Among 
the guests were ex-President Chester A. Arthur ; the Rev. 
Charles S. Yedder, President of the Kew England Society 
of Charleston, S. C. ; United States Senator William M. 
Evarts ; Mayor Seth Low of Brooklyn ; Chief Justice Noah 
Davis of the New York State Supreme Court ; Surrogate 
Daniel G. Rollins, and very many of the prominent clergy- 
men, professional men, bankers, merchants, and business men 
of New York and Brooklyn who are of New England birth 
or descent. 

President Stewart L. Woodford called the assembly to 
order and presented the Right Rev. Henry C. Potter, Assist- 
ant Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Dio- 
cese of New York, Bishop Potter offered the following 
prayer : 

Almighty and ever-living God, who art always more ready 
to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than we 
can desire or deserve, we come to-day to ask thy blessing on 
this our undertaking, and thy presence, as we unveil this 
statue, commemorating those from whose loins we ourselves 
have sprung. We bless thee that thou didst put it into 
their hearts to seek this land of liberty, and that thou didst 
lead their pilgrim feet across the sea, and didst bring them 
out at last into a wealthy place. We thank thee for those 
virtues of courage, heroism, and constancy to duty which 
their lives illustrated ; and that in thine own good time and 
way thou didst open in this land a refuge for the oppressed 
of every clime and tongue. Be with us to-day, and always, 
as we gratefully remember their virtues, and honor their 
patience and faith ; and grant most of all that the spirit of 
the fathers may not die out in the children, but that, as they 
did, we may seek more light, and welcome it when it comes 
to lis, being, meantime, faithful, as they were, to such light 



10 

and knowledge as we have, and, imperfect though it be, 
may aim to live in accordance with it. Preserve the strain 
which has been so potent for good in the fortunes of this 
people, and grant that, wherever they may go, the Pilgrim 
sons of Pilgrim fathers may not forget that they are pledged 
to purity and reverence and law. 

Preserve us amid the dangers of prosperity, and save us 
from the fate of those who, growing in luxury, decay in vir- 
tue, and, increasing in the riches of this world, grow poor 
in character and faith. 

Remember our rulers, set in difficult places, amid large 
and anxious tasks. Give them courage, and constancy to 
principle, and fearlessness in the face of all ungodly opposi- 
tion. 

Vouchsafe thy blessing to this great city in which we live, 
and to all who are striving here with its manifold moral and 
social problems. Make them to begin and continue their 
endeavors in simple dependence upon thee. Govern us, O 
God, and so lift us up for ever. 

All which we ask in the name and for the sake of Him 
who hath taught us, when we pray, to say : 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us 
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 
for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for- 
ever and ever. Amen. 

President Woodford then introduced Park Commissioner 
Henry R. Beekman as the presiding officer of the occasion. 
Mr. Beekman on taking the chair spoke as follows : 



11 



REMARKS OF HENRY R. BEEKMAN, ESQ. 

Gentlemen of the New England Society ; Ladies and 
Gentlemen : 

We are here to-day, not to commemorate the greatness or 
virtues of an individual, but the type of a race which has 
played an important part in framing the political structure 
of a great nation, in developing the material resources of a 
great country, and in establishing as an accomplished fact 
the great principle that orderly government and national 
greatness may coexist with the largest measure of personal 
liberty. 

More than two hundred years have elapsed since those 
days, ever memorable in the annals of this city, when the 
men of New Amsterdam and the Puritans of New England 
contended with each other over their boundaries, and looked 
with distaste upon each other's customs, manners, and habits. 

"While they were alike in the robustness of their manhood, 
their revolt against tyranny, and their devotion to principle, ^ 
they differed so widely in their habits of life and views of , 
social duties that neither could or would recognize the 
merits of the other. 

The Puritan gazed with stern disapproval upon the social 
pleasures to which the worthy Hollander attached so much ' . 
importance, while the latter turned with aversion from the 
joyless face, the austere habits, and what seemed to him 
the sunless existence of the other. 

And so they quarrelled. 

Since then, Time, the great refiner, has purged away the 
dross of each, and the Puritan lias been taught that things 
are not bad because they are pleasant, while the Hollander 
has learned the sad lesson that ease of life must give place 
to the restless activities of modern times. 

The old jealousies have long since passed away. The de- 



12 

scendants of those who stood apart in all the isolation of ri- 
val communities now stand together, welded into one peo- 
ple, the same in tastes, aims, pursuits, and habits of life, but 
not forgetting the ancestors from whom they sprung or fail- 
ing to commemorate their virtues. 

In this spirit New England asks, and New York gladly 
tenders, the hospitalities of this fair domain, dedicated to all 
that is gracious in nature and suggestive in art. 

We welcome this beautiful memorial of the Puritan not 
only for itself, but also as a token that in the union of the 
children sectionalism has disappeared, and the virtues and 
excellence of the adventurous men who first peopled this 
country have become a common inheritance. 

Mrs. Hemans' well-known hymn of the '" Pilgrim Fathers'^ 
was then sung in most admirable manner by the choir, com- 
posed of the New York Chorus Society and the Amphion 
Society of Brooklyn, the entire chorus being under the 
direction of Mr. C. Mortimer Wiske, musical conductor. 

As the last strains of the hymn died away, the Seventh 
Regiment Band began playing, and the sculptor, Mr. Ward, 
drew the cords which bound the flag about the statue. As 
its folds fell apart they revealed the heroic bronze figure of 
the Pilgrim. 

When the applause which followed the unveiling had sub- 
sided, Mr. Daniel F. Appleton, an ex-President of the 
Society and Chairman of the Committee, presented, in be- 
half of his associates, the statue to the New England Society. 
His remarks were as follows : 



13 



REMARKS OF DANIEL F. APPLETON. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England 
Society : 

It is now more than six years ago since you appointed u 
committee, of which I have tlie honor to be president,, 
directing us to erect in the city of New York a monumen^t 
to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on Ply- 
month Rock. Your committee has finished its labors, and 
we believe that the wisdom of our choice in selecting Mr, 
Ward as our artist is fully justified by the great excellence 
of his work, which we now tender to you in the hope that it 
will be as acceptable to the Society as it is satisfactory to the 
committee. 

President Woodford received the statue on behalf of the- 
New England Society, and then presented it to the city of 
New York in the following words : 

PRESIDENT WOODFORD'S SPEECH. 

To you, Mr. Appleton, and to your fellow-members of 
the Monument Committee, the New England Society is 
indebted for the admirable manner in which your task has 
been performed. To the sculptor our thanks are also due, 
but while yonder statue stands it will tell better than words 
of mine can tell how well he has done his work. He has 
wisely chosen an ideal of the Pilgrim Fathers as his sub- ' 
ject — for the Pilgrim was the Puritan of the Puritans. 

It is fitting that in this great city, whose population 
numbers so many of New England's sons, we should raise 
a memorial to those whose character and principles have 
so largely made our city what it is. New England men 
fully recognize and gratefully admit that all nations,, 
all peoples and tongues make up this city of our homes and 



14 

love. New York is the product of many forces and many 
lands. While New-Englanders thus praise the work of 
others, we should be false to our ancestrj^ and to the memo- 
ries of Plymouth Rock if we did not modestly, good- 
naturedly, but positively assert our belief that the work and 
influence of the Pilgrim and Puritan have done more than 
all else for this imperial city. 

, As we look on that solitary figure, standing with far- 
away gaze, as if those searching eyes could pierce through 
long generations and catch a glimpse of the golden future 
beyond, our thoughts turn back to another scene in striking 
contrast to the one around. What a step across the centu- 
ries from the desolation of Plymouth Rock to this Centi-al 
Park on this glorious June day ! We seem for one 
moment to stand on New England's rugged coast and 
greet a band of homeless exiles. All honor to our Pilgrim 
forefathers w^ho, listening to the higher voices, obeyed the 
commands of conscience, and, leaving home and country 
for duty's sake, " sailed with God the seas." The past fades, 
and we are back in this busy, breathing present. New York 
is around us. Only yonder statue is before us. The art of 
the sculptor has made those bronze lips speak. They tell of 
heroic endurance, of obedience to the voice of duty, of loyalty 
to justice, truth, and right. The shadow of Plymouth Rock 
steals across the centuries. May it not fall over us in vain! 
Yonder flsure stands as the Pilm-im of old stood, with his 
back to his friends and flatterers, and with his face to his 
foes and duty. 

We give this statue to the city. Long may the blue 
skies bend over it, and long may our city prosper and keep 
its faith in the principles for which the Pilgrim Fathers 
wrouffht and lived, suffered and died ! 



15 

At the close of President Woodford's remarks, Mr, Beek- 
man presented Adolpli L. Sanger, President of the Board of 
Aldermen, who, in the absence of Major Grace, received 
the statue in behalf of New York, in the following words : 



REMARKS OF ADOLPH L. SANGER, ESQ. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England 
Society : 

The Pilgrim Fathers have stamped their individuality 
upon the life and the progress of this nation. 

The corner-stone of their faith, religious libert}', has be- 
come the corner-stone of the prosperity and the perpetuity 
of these United States. 

I accept this statue in the name and in behalf of the peo- 
ple of the city of New York. 

One more beautiful work of art is now added to the 
numerous monuments w^hich grace this grand park ; and to 
all who shall come to this spot, whether the young or the 
aged, may the statue of the "Pilgrim" not only remind 
them of the heroic deeds and the self-denials of these sturdy 
pioneers, but stimulate them, by the memory of their achieve- 
ments, to still nobler efforts of patriotism and inspire them 
with a deeper love of country ! 

At the conclusion of Mr. Sanger's remarks the choir ren- 
dered in an admirable manner the Pilgrim Chorus from 
I' Lombardi. 

George William Curtis, the orator of the day, was then 
introduced by the Chairman, and was received with long- 
continued and hearty applause. His address is given here- 
with in full : 



16 



ORATION BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, ESQ. 

To-day and here, we, who are children of New England, 
have but one thought, the Puritan ; one pride and joy, the 
Puritan story. That transcendent stoiy, in its larger rela- 
tions, involving the whole modern development and diffu- 
sion and organization of English liberty, touched into 
romance by the glowing imagination, is proudly repeated by 
every successive generation of the English-speaking race, 
and lives and breathes and burns in legend and in song. 
In its greatest incident, tlie Pilgrim emigration to America, 
it is a story of achievement unparalleled in the annals of the 
world for the majesty of its purpose and the poverty of its 
means, the weakness of the beginning and the grandeur of 
the result. Contemplating the unnoted and hasty flight by 
night of a few Englishmen from the lonely coast of Lincoln- 
shire to Holland, — the peaceful life in exile, — the perilous 
ocean- voyage afterward, lest in that friendly land the fervor 
of the true faith should fail, — the frail settlement at Ply- 
mouth, a shred of the most intense and tenacious life in 
Europe floating over the sea and clinging to the bleak edge 
of America, harassed by Indians, beset by beasts, by disease, 
by exposure, by death in every form, beyond civilization and 
succor, beyond the knowledge or interest of mankind, a 
thin, thin thread of the Old World by w'hich incalculable 
destinies of the New World hung, yet taking such vital hold 
that it swiftly overspreads and dominates a continent cov- 
ered to-day with a population more industrious, more intel- 
ligent, happier, man for man, than any people upon which 
the sun ever shone — contemplating this spectacle, our exult- 
ing hearts break into the language which was most familiar 
to the lips of the Pilgrims, — a pitean of triumph, a proud 
prophecy accomplished, — "The desert shall rejoice and 



17 

"blossom as the rose." "A little one sluiU become a thou- 
sand, and a small one a strong nation." 

Here, indeed, we are far from the scenes most familiar to 
the eyes of the Pilgrims ; we ai'e surrounded by other tradi- 
tions and solicited by other memories. But under these 
radiant heavens, amid this abounding beauty of summer, 
our hearts go backward to a winter day. The roaring city 
sinks to a silent wilderness. These flower-fringed lawns 
become a barren shore. This animated throng, changed to 
a grave-faced group in sombre garb, scans wistfully the soli- 
tary waste. The contrast is complete. All, all is changed. 
— But no, not all. Unchanged as the eternal sky above us 
is the moral law which they revered. Unfailing as the sure 
succession of the seasons is its operation in the affairs of 
men. All the prosperity, the power, the permanence of 
the republic, — more than ever tlie pride of its children, 
more than ever the hope of mankind, — rests upon obedience 
to that unchanged and unchangeable law. The essence 
of the Fathers' faitli is still the elixii- of the children's 
life ; and should that faith decay, should the consciousness 
of a divine energy underlying human society, manifested 
in just and equal laws, and humanely ordering indi- 
vidual relations, disappear, — the murmur of the ocean 
rising and falling upon Plymouth Rock would be the endless 
lament of nature over the baflied hopes of man. 

Undoubtedly, New England in all its aspects of scenery 
and people, in its history and achievement, its energy, intel- 
ligence, sagacity, industry, and thrift, — Xew England of 
the church, the school, and the town meeting, is still the 
great, peculiar monument of the Puritan in America. But 
where beyond its borders more iitly than here, upon this 
ground settled by children of the hospitable country which 
was the first refuge of the Puritan, could a memorial statue 
stand? In England "they had heard that in tlie Low 
Countries was freedom of worship for all men," and thither 



18 

tlie Pilgrims first fled ; and wlien from tluit pleasant haven' 
they resolved to cross the sea, they brought with them from 
^ Holland the free church and the free school, and uncon- 
^ ^ sciously, in their principles and the practice of their reli- 
gious organization, the free state. They were urged by a 
trading company in Amsterdam to settle under Dutch pro- 
tection here in New Netherlands. But yet, although they 
courteously declined, when after sixty-four days' tossing 
upon the ocean they saw the desolate sands of Cape Cod,, 
they resolved to stand toward the south, " to find some 
place about the Hudson Kiver for their habitation." They 
turned again, however, to the bleaker shore. The Fathers 
did not come. But long afterward the children came, and 
are continually coming, to renew the ancient friendship. 

Well may the statue of the Puritan stand here, for in the 
mighty miracle of the scene around us his hand, too, has 
wrought. Here upon this teeming island the children of 
New Netherlands and of New England have together built 
the metropolis of the continent, the far-shining monument 
of their united energy, enterprise, and skill. Together at the 
head of yonder river, richer in romance and legend than any 
American stream, the Puritan and the Hollander with 
their associate colonists meditated the American Union. To- 
gether in this city, in the Stamp- Act Congress, they defied 
the power of Great Britain ; and once more, upon the Hud- 
son, the Puritan and the Cavalier and the Hollander, born 
again as Americans, resistlessly enveloped and overwhelmed 
the army of Burgoyne, and in his surrender beheld the end 
of British authority in the Colonies. Here, then, shall the 
statue stand, imperishable memorial of imperishable friend- 
ship ; blending the heroic memories of two worlds and two 
epochs, the soldier of the Netherlands, the soldier of old 
England and the soldier of New England, at different times 
and under different conditions, but with the same uncon- 
querable enthusiasm and courage, battling for liberty. 



19 

The spirit which is personified in tliis statue had never a 
completer expression than in the Puritan, but it is far older 
than he. Beyond Plymouth and Leyden, — beyond the 
manor-house of Scrooby and the dim shore of the Humber, 
— before Wickliffe and the German reformers, — on heaven- 
kissing pastures of the everlasting Alps, — on the bright 
shores of the Medicean Arno, — in the Roman forum, — in 
the golden day of Athens of the violet crown, — wherever 
the human heart has beat for liberty and the liuman con- 
sciousness has vaguely quickened with its divine birthright, — 
wherever the instinct of freedom challenges authority and 
demands the reason no less than the poetry of tradition — 
there, there, whatever the age, whatever the country, the 
man, the costume, there is the invincible spirit of the Puri- 
tan. 

But the vague and general aspiration for liberty took the 
distinctive form of historical Puritanism only with the Re- 
formation in the sixteenth century. Forerunners, indeed, 
harbingers of the o^eneral awakenino^, there had been lons^ 
before Luther, scattered voices as of early-wakening birds in 
the summer night preluding the full choir of day. The 
cry of all, the universal cry that I'ang across Europe from 
Wickliffe to Savonarola, from John Huss and Jerome of V 
Prague to Zwingli and Erasmus, from the Alpine glaciers to 
the fiords of Norway, and which broke at last like a thunder 
clap from the lips of Martin Luther and shook the ancient 
ecclesiastical system to its foundations, was the demand for 
reform. To reform in the language of that great century 
meant to purify, and the Reformation was identical with 
Purification, with Puritanism. 

But the spiritual usurpation intolerable in a pope was in- 
sufferable in a king. Henrv the Eighth would have made 
England a newer Rome; and Edmund Burke's stately phrase, 
studied from the aspect of a milder time, was justified in all 
its terrible sio-nificance in Elizabethan Eno-land. The Eno^- 
2 



20 

lish hierarchy raised its mitred front in Court and Parlia- 
ment, demanding unquestioning acquiescence and submis- 
sion. But the conviction that had challenged Rome did not 
quail : and tlie spirit of hostility to the English as to the 
Roman dogma of spiritual supremacy, the unconscious pro- 
tector of that religious, political, and civil liberty which is 
the great boon of England to the world, a boon and a glory 
beyond that of Shakespeare, of Bacon, of Raleigh, of Gresh- 
am, of Newton, of "Watts, beyond that of all her loft}^ 
literature, her endless enterprise, her inventive genius, her 
material prosperity, her boundless empire, was Puritanism. 
If ever England had an heroic age, it was that which 
began by supporting the Tudor in his rupture with Rome, 
then asserted his own logical principle against his daughter's 
claim, and after a tremendous contest ended by seeing the 
last of the Stuart kings exiled forever, an impotent pen- 
sioner of France. This was the age of Puritan England, 
the England in which liberty finally organized itself in con- 
stitutional forms so flexible and enduring that for nearly 
two centuries the internal peace of the kingdom, however 
threatened and alarmed, has never been broken. The 
modern England that we know is the England of the Puri- 
tan enlai'ged, liberalized, graced, adorned — the England 
which, despite all estrangement and jealousy and misunder- 
standing, despite the alienation of the Revolution and of the 
second war, the buzz of cockney gnats, and official indif- 
ference in our fierce civil conflict, is still the mother-country 
of our distinctive America, the mother of our language and 
its literature, of our characteristic national impulse and of 
the great muniments of our individual liberty. To what land 
upon the globe beyond his own shall the countryman of 
AVashington turn with pride and enthusiasm and sympathy, 
if not to the land of John Selden and John Hampden 
and John Milton ; and what realm shall touch so deeply the 
heart of the fellow-citizen of Abraham Lincoln as that 



21 

whose soil, and long before our own, was too sacred for the 
footstep of a slave ? She is not the mother of dead empires, 
but of the greatest political descendant that ever the world 
knew. Our own revolution was the defence of England 
against herself. She has sins enough to answer for. But 
Avhile Greece gave us art and Rome gave us law, in the 
very blood that beats in our hearts and throbs along our 
veins England gave us liberty. 

We must not think of Puritanism as mere acrid defiance 
and sanctimonious sectarianism, nor of the Puritans as a band 
of ignorant and half-crazy zealots. Yet mainly from the vin- 
dictive caricature of a voluptuous court and a servile age is 
derived the popular conception of the Puritan. He was 
only slandered by Ben Jonson's Tribulation Wholesome and 
Zeal-of-the-land Busy. The Puritan of whom Macaulay, 
following Hume, said that he hated bear-baiting, not because 
it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the 
spectatoi', was the Puritan of the plays of Charles the 
Second, when Shakespeare had been replaced by Aphra 
Behn, and the object of the acted drama was to stimulate a 
passion palled by excess and a taste brutalized by debauch- 
ery. The literature that travestied the Puritan sprang from 
the same impotent hate which scattered the ashes of Wick- 
liffe upon the Severn and disinterred the dead Cromwell 
and hung the body in chains at Tyburn, insulting the dust 
of the hero who living had made England great, and to 
whose policy, after the effeminate and treacherous Stuart 
reaction, England returned. The Cavaliers ridiculed the 
Puritan as Burgoyne and the idle British officers in Boston 
burlesqued the Yankee patriot. They had their laugh, 
their jest, their gibe. But it is not to the rollicking mas- 
queraders of the British barracks, to the scarlet soldiers of 
the crown, that we look to see the living picture of our 
Washington and Hamilton, our Jay and Adams, who 
plucked from the crown its brighest gem. It is not the 



^' 



futile ribaldrj' of fops and fribbles, of courtiers and courte- 
sans, of religious slavery and political despotism, whose 
fatal spell over England the Puritan had broken forever, 
■which can truly ])ortra3' the Puritan. 

When Elizabeth died, the country gentlemen, the great 
"traders in the towns, the sturdy steadfast middle class, the 
class from which English character and strength have 
•sprung, were chiefly Puritans. Puritans taught in the uni- 
versities and sat on the thrones of bishops. They were 
Peers in Parliament, they were Ambassadors and Secretaries 
of StatCi Hutchinson, graced with every accomplishment 
of the English gentleman, was a Puritan. Sir Henry Yane, 
by whose side sat justice, was a Puritan. John Hampden, 
purest of jDatriots, M-as a Puritan. John Pym, greatest of 
Parliamentary leaders, was a Puritan. — A fanatic? Yes, in 
the high sense of unchangeable fidelity to a sublime idea ; — a 
fanatic like Columbus sure of a Avestern passage to India 
over a mysterious ocean which no mariner had ever sailed ; — 
a fanatic like Galileo who marked the courses of the stars and 
saw, despite the jargon of authority, that still the earth 
moved ; — a fanatic like Joseph Warren whom the gloiy of 
patriotism transfigures upon Bunker Hill. This was the fa- 
natic who read the Bible to the English people and quickened 
English life with the fire of the primeval faith ; who smote 
the Spaniard and swept the pirates from the sea, and rode 
with Cromwell and the Ironsides, praising God ; who to the 
utmost shores of the Mediteri-anean, and in the shuddering 
valleys of Piedmont, to everj^ religious oppressor and foe of 
England made the name of Eno^land teri-ible. This was the 
fanatic, soft as sunshine in the young Milton, blasting in 
Cromwell as the thunder-bolt, in Endicott austere as Calvin, 
in Roffcr Williams benijifn as Melanchthon, in John Pobin- 
son foreseeing moi'c truth to break forth from God's Avord. 
In all history do you see a nobler figure? Forth from the 
morning of Greece, come, Leonidas, with your bravest of the 



23 

brave, — in the rapt city plead, Demosthenes, your country's 
cause, — phick, Gracchus, from aristocratic Rome its crown ; 
speak, Cicero, your magic word ; lift, Cato, your admonish- 
ing hand, — and you, patriots of modern Europe, be all grate- 
fully remembered ; — but where in the earlier ages, in the 
later day, in lands remote or near, shall we find loftier self- ■ 
sacrifice, more unstained devotion to w^orthier ends, issuing 
in happier results to the highest interests of man, than in 
the English Puritan ? 

He apprehended his own principle, indeed, often blindly, 
often narrowly, never in its utmost amplitude and splendor. 
The historic Puritan was a man of the seventeenth century, 
not of the nineteenth. He saw through a glass darkly, but 
he saw. The acorn is not yet the oak, the well-spring is 
not yet the river. But as the harvest is folded in the seed, 
so the largest freedom political and religious, — liberty, not 
toleration, not permission, not endurance — in yonder heaven 
Cassiopeia does not tolerate Arcturus nor the clustered 
Pleiades permit Orion to shine — the right of absolute 
individual liberty, subject only to the equal right of others, 
is the ripened fruit of the Puritan principle. 

It is this fact, none the less majestic because he was 
unconscious of it, which invests the emigration of the Puri- 
tan to this country with a dignity and grandeur that belong 
to no other colonization. In unfurling his sail for that 
momentous voyage he was impelled by no passion of dis- 
covery, no greed of trade, no purpose of conquest. He was 
the most practical, the least romantic of men, but he was 
allured by no vision of worldly success. The winds that 
blew the Mayflower over the sea were not more truly airs 
from heaven than the moral impulse and moral heroism 
which inspired her voyage. Sebastian Cabot, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, Francis Drake and Frobisher, Cortez and Ponce de 
Leon, Champlain, bearing southward from the St. Lawrence 
the lilies of France, Henry Hudson pressing northward from 



V 



24 

Sand}' Hook with the flag of Holland, sought mines of gold, 
a profitable trade, the fountain of youth, colonial empire, 
the north-western passage, a shorter channel to Cathay. 
But the Puritan obeyed solely the highest of all human 
motives. He dared all that men have ever dared, seeking 
only freedom to worship God. Had the story of the Puri- 
itan ended with the landing upon Plymouth Kock, — had the 
rigors of that first winter which swept away half of the Pil- 
grims obliterated every trace of the settlement, — had the un- 
noted Mayflower sunk at sea, — still the Puritan story would 
have been one of the noblest in the annals of the human race. 
But it was happily developed into larger results, and the 
Puritan, changed with the changing time, adding sweetness 
to strength, and a broader humanity to moral conviction 
and religious earnestness, was reserved for a grander des- 
tiny. 

The Puritan came to America seeking freedom to worship 
God. He meant only freedom to worship God in his own 
way, not in the Quaker way, not in the Baptist way, not in 
the Church of England way. But the seed that he brought 
was immortal. His purpose was to feed with it his own 
barnyard fowl, but it quickened into, an illimitable for- 
est covering a continent with grateful shade, the home 
of every bird that flies. Freedom to worship God is uni- 
versal freedom, a free state as well as a free church, and that 
was the inexorable but unconscious logic of Puritanism. 
Holding that the true rule of religious faith and worship 
was written in the Bible, and that every man must read and 
judge for himself, the Puritan conceived the church as a 
body of independent seekers and interpreters of the truth, 
dispensing with priests and priestly orders and functions; 
organizing itself and calling no man master. But this sense 
of equality before God and toward each other in the relig- 
ious congregation, affecting and adjusting the highest and 
most eternal of all human relations, that of man to his 



25 

Maker, applied itself instinctively to the relation of man to 
man in human society, and thus popular government flowed 
out of the Reformation, and the Republic became the natural 
political expression of Puritanism. 

See, also, how the course and circumstance of the Puritan 
story had confirmed this tendency. The earliest English re- 
formers, flying from the fierce reaction of Mary, sought free- 
dom in the immemorial abode of freedom, Switzerland, 
whose singing waterfalls and ranz des vaches echoing among 
peaks of eternal ice and shadowy valleys of gentleness and 
repose, murmured ever the story of Morgarten and Sempach, 
the oath of the men of Riitli, the daring of William Tell, 
the greater revolt of Zwingli. There was Geneva, the stern 
republic of the Reformation, and every Alpine canton was 
a republican community lifted high for all men to see, a 
light set upon a liill. How beautiful upon the mountains 
were the heralds of glad tidings ! This vision of the free 
state lingered in the Puritan mind. It passed in tradition 
from sire to son, and the dwellers in Amsterdam and Ley- 
den, maintaining a republican church, unconsciously became 
that republican state whose living beauty their fathers had 
beheld, and which they saw glorified, dimly and afar, in the 
old Alpine vision. 

Banished, moreover, by the pitiless English persecution, 
the Puritans, exiles and ])oor in a foreign land, a colony in 
Holland before they were a colony in America, were com- 
pelled to self-government, to a common sympathy and sup- 
port, to bearing one another's burdens; and so, by the stern 
experience of actual life, they were trained in the virtues 
most essential for the fulfilment of their auorust but unim- 
agined destiny. The patriots of the Continental Congress 
seemed to Lord Chatham imposing beyond the law-givers of 
Greece and Rome. The Constitutional Convention a hun- 
dred years ago was an assembly so wise that its accomplished 
work is reverently received by continuous generations, as the 



26 

cliildren of Israel received the tables of the law which Moses 
brought down from the Holy Mount. Happy, thrice happy 
the people which to such scenes in their history can add the 
simple grandeur of the spectacle in the cabin of the May- 
flower, the Puritans signing the compact which was but the 
formal expression of the government that voluntarily they 
had established — the scene which makes Plymouth Pock a 
stepping-stone from the freedom of the solitary Alps and the 
disputed liberties of England to the fully developed consti- 
tutional and well-ordered I'epublic of the United States. 

The history of colonial JSTew England and of Isew Eng- 
land in the Union is the story of the influence of the Puritan 
in America. That is a theme too alluring to neglect, too 
vast to be attempted now. But even in pnssing I must not 
urge a claim too- broad. Even in the pride of this hour, 
and with the consent of your approving conviction and sym- 
pathy, I must not proclaim that the republic like a conquer- 
ing goddess sprang from the head fully armed, and that the 
head was New England. Yet the imperial commonwealth 
of which we are citizens, and every sister-State, will agree 
that in the two great periods of our history, the colonial 
epoch and that of the national union, the influence of 'New 
England has not been the least of all influences in the forma- 
tive and achieving processes toward the great and common 
result. The fondly cherished tradition of Hadley may be 
doubted and disproved, but like the legends of the old myth- 
ology it will live on, glowing and palpitating with essential 
truth. It may be that we must surrender the story of the 
villagers upon the Connecticut sorely beset by Indians at 
mid-day and about to yield; perhaps no actual, venerable 
form appears with flowing hair, — like that white plnme of 
conquering Navarre, — and with martial mien and voice of 
command rallies the desi^airing band, cheering them on to 
victor}^ then vanishing in air. The heroic legend may be a 
fable, but none the less it is the Puritan who marches in the 



27 

van of our characteristic history, it is the subtle and pene- 
trating influence of New England which has been felt in 
every part of our national life, as the cool wind blowing from 
her pine-clad mountains breathes a loftier inspiration, a 
health more vigorous, a fresher impulse, upon her own green 
valleys and happy fields. 

See how she has diffused her population. Like the old 
statues of the Danube and the Nile, figures reclining upon 
a reedy shore and from exhaustless urns pouring water 
which flows abroad in a thousand streams of benediction, so 
has New England sent forth her children. Following the 
sun westward, across the Hudson and the Mohawk and the 
Susquehanna, over the Alleghanies into the valley of the 
Mississippi, over the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean^ 
the endless procession from New England has moved for 
a century, bearing ever^'where Puritan principle, Puritan 
enterprise, and Puritan thrift. A hundred years ago New- 
Englanders passed beyond the calm Dutch Arcadia upon the / 
Mohawk, and striking into the primeval forest of the ancient 
Iroquois domain began the settlement of central New York. 
A little later, upon the Genesee, settlers from Maryland and 
Pennsylvania met, but the pioneers from New England took 
the firmest hold and left the deepest and most permanent / 
impression. A hundred years ago there was no white set- 
tlement in Ohio. But in 1789 the seed of Ohio was carried 
from Massachusetts, and from the loins of the great eastern 
commonwealth sprang the first great commonwealth of tlie 
West. Early in the century a score of settlements be3'ond 
the Alleghanies bore tlie name of Salem, the spot where first 
in America the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay set foot; and 
in the dawn of the Revolution the hunters in the remote 
valley of the Elkhorn, hearing the news of the 19th of April^ 
called their camp Lexington, and thus, in the response of 
their heroic sympathy, the Puritan of New England named 
the early capital of Kentucky. But happier still, while yet 



28 

tlie great region of the Nortliwest lay in primeval wilder- 
ness awaiting the creative touch that should lift it into civil- 
ization, it was the Puritan instinct whicli fulfilled the aspi- 
ration of Jefferson, and by the Ordinance of 17S7 consecrated 
the , Northwest to freedom. So in the civilization of the 
country has New England been a pioneer, and so deeply 
upon American life and institutions has the genius of New 
England impressed itself, that in the great Civil War the 
peculiar name of the New Englander, the Yankee, became 
the distinguishing title of the soldier of the Union ; the 
national cause was the Yankee cause ; and a son of the West, 
born in Kentucky and a citizen of Illinois, who had never 
seen New England twice in his life, became the chief repre- 
sentative Yankee, and with his hand, strong with the will of 
the people, the Puritan principle of liberty and equal rights 
broke the chains of a race. New England characteristics 
have become national qualities. The blood of New England 
flows with energizing, modifying, progressive poM'er in the 
veins of every State ; and the undaunted spirit of the Puritan, 
sic semper tyraniiis, animates the continent from sea to sea. 
I have mentioned the two cardinal periods of our history, 
the colonial epoch and the epoch of the Union. In all ex- 
clusively material aspects our colonial annals are perhaps 
singularly barren of the interest which makes history at- 
tractive. Straggling and desultory Indian warfare, — the 
transformation of wild forest land to fertile fields, — marches 
to the frontier to repel the French, — the establishment of 
peaceful industries, — the opening of prosperous trade,— a vast 
contest with nature, and incessant devotion to material cir- 
cumstance and condition, but with no soft and humanizing 
light of native literature shining upon the hard life, no refin- 
ing art, no great controversies of statesmanship in which the 
genius of the English-speaking race delights, — these, with a 
rigid and sombre theology overshadowing all, compose the 
colonial story. Yet the colonial epoch was the heroic period 



29 

•of our annals. For beneath all these earnest and engrossing 
activities of colonial life, its unwasting central fire was the 
sensitive jealousy of the constant encroachment of the home 
government against which the Puritan instinct and the Puri- 
tan practice furnished the impregnable defence. The free 
church, the free school, the town meeting, institutions of a 
community which not only loves liberty but comprehends 
the conditions under which liberty ceases to be merely the 
aspiration of hope, and becomes an actual possession and an 
organized power, — these were the practical schools of Ameri 
can independence, and these were the distinctive institutions 
of N^ew England. Without the training of such institutions 
successful colonial resistance w^ould have been impossible, 
but without New England this training would not have been. 
Nay, more ; I can conceive that New England, planted 
by a hundred men who were selected by the heroic struggle 
for freedom of two hundred years, — New England, of a 
homogeneous population and common religious faith, cher- 
ishing the proud tradition of her origin, and during the long 
virtual isolation from Europe of a hundred and forty years 
successfully governing herself, might, even alone, wdth sub- 
lime temerity and without the co-operation of other colonies, 
have defied the unjust mother-country, and with the unap- 
palled devotion of the Swiss cantons which the early Puri- 
tans knew, and with all the instinct of a true national life, 
have sought its independence. This I can conceive. But 
the preliminary movement, the nascent sentiment of inde- 
pendence deepening into conviction and ripening into revo- 
lution, the assured consciousness of ability to cope with every 
circumstance and to command every event, that supreme, 
sovereign, absolute absorption and purpose which interpret 
the truth that " one with God is a majority," — all this in 
colonial America without New England I cannot, at that 
time, conceive. I do not say, of course, that except for New 
Eno-land America would have remained alwavs colonial and 



30 

subject to Great Britain. Not tliat at all ; but only this, that 
for every great movement of change and progress, of research 
and discovery, of protest and revolution, there must be a pio- 
neer. Who supposes that except for Columbus the western 
continent would have remained hidden always and unknown 
to the eastern world ? But who can doubt that except for 
the perpetual brooding vision which filled the soul of the 
Genoese and bound him fast to the mysterious quest, the 
awed Indians of San Salvador would not have seen the fore- 
runner of civilization on that October morning four centuricvS^ 
ago, and that except for Columbus, America would not then 
have been discovered ? So in the colonial epoch, doubtless 
the same general feeling prevailed thi'ough all the colonies^ 
the same great principles were cherished, the same motives 
stirred the united colonial heart. The cry was not Virginia 
nor Massachusetts, it was continental America. But none 
the less, on the transplanted sapling of the English oak that 
drew its sustenance from the connnon American soil, the one 
spot most sensitive, most swelling, from which the vigorous 
new growth was sure to spring, was Puritan New England. 
In our second historical epoch, that of the Union, the es- 
sential controversy, under whatever plea and disguise, was 
that of the fundamental principle of free goveiiiment with 
a social, political, and industrial system to which that princi- 
ple was absolutely hostile. Tariffs, banks, fiscal schemes, 
internal policy, foreign ])olicy, state sovereignty, the limita- 
tions of national authoi'ity, — these were the counters with 
which the momentous game was played. I speak to those 
in whose memories still echo the thunders and flash the 
lightnings of that awful tempest in the forum and the field. 
I accuse no section of the country. I arraign no party. I 
denounce no man. I speak of forces greater than men, 
forces deep as human nature, forces that make and unmake 
nations ; that threw Hampden with the Parliament and 
Falkland with the king. It was a controversy whose first 



ai 

menace was lieard in the first Congress, and wliicli swelled 
constantly louder and more threatening to the end. A house 
divided against itself cannot stand, said the beloved patriot 
who was to be the national martyr of the strife. The con- 
flict is irrepressible, answered the statesman who was to 
share wdtli him the conduct of the country through the 
storm. Wlio could doubt that it was irrepressible who 
knew the American heart, but who could doubt also that it 
"svould be tremendous, appalling, unyielding, who knew the 
resources of the foe? American slavery w^as so strong in 
"^tradition, in sentiment, in commercial interest, in political 
'])Ower, in constitutional theory, in the timidity of trade, in 
the passion for Union, in dogged and unreasoning sectional 
ihatred ; it so pleaded a religious sanction, the patriarchal re- 
ilation, even a certain romance of childlike dependence and 
1:he extension of Christian grace to the heathen, that like an 
'unassailable fortress upon heights inaccessible it frowned in 
.'gloomy sovereignty over a subject land. 

There was but one force which could oppose the vast and 
:accumulated power of slavery in this country, and that was 
:the force -which in other years and lands had withstood the 
•consuming terrors of the hierarchy and the crushing despot- 
lism of the crown — the conscience of the people ; a moral 
^conviction so undaunted and uncompromising that endur- 
ance could not exhaust it, nor suffering nor wounds nor 
•death appal. The great service of the Puritan in the sec- 
ond epoch was the appeal to this conscience which prepared 
it for the conflict. Its key-note was the immortal declaration 
of Garrison, in which the trumpet-voice of the spirit that has 
made 'New England rang out once more, clear and unmis- 
takable, awaking at last the reluctant echoes of the continent : 
" I am in earnest ; I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, 
I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." There 
were other voices, indeed, voices everywhere, harmonious 
.and historic voices, swelling the chorus ; but chiefly from 



